Perlmutter & Supernovae: Debunking the Myth of Accelerating Galaxies

[gork]

I've been an amateur quantum physicists for most of my life, and ever since 1998 I've been wondering about this issue, but I figured someone would address it. Now they've given the Nobel to the guy and I still don't understand something.

Perlmutter says that galaxies are accelerating away from each other. He bases this on the fact that things that are farther away from us are moving faster than things which are closer. The problem is that we see things farther away from us as they were farther in the past. So quasars at the edge of the visible universe were traveling at .9c 13.7 billion years ago. Galaxies half as far away were traveling half that speed 7 billion years ago, or whatever the numbers are. Andromeda is actually moving closer to us and that is still 2.5 million years ago. The evidence seems to me to indicate, not that things are accelerating, but that they are slowing down. We have no idea what speed those distant galaxies are moving at right now. They could be moving closer to us by this point.

Can anyone show me where I'm wrong on this?

 

[Gary Kent]

Perhaps the answer lies in relativity itself. The measurements seem to show that the farthest objects that can be seen in the universe are accelerating away from us. But, since motion is relative, it also means that we are also accelerating in our motion through spacetime. We cannot measure our own motion so easily as we can very distant objects, so we need to use indirect inferrence.

By the way, it is said that we should regard the expansion rate of the universe as generating true kinematic motion, not just a "stretching" of spacetime. The idea here is that we shall avoid confusion this way. So, it is perfectly proper to speak of the expansion of the universe as if it gave rise to actual motion.

 

[Drakkith]

Gork, all I can say is that everything supports our observations. Einsteins General Relativity actually PREDICTED this possibility before we ever observed it. I would recommend visiting wikipedia and hitting up its articles on expansion of the universe, hubbles law, and general relativity if you are actually interested in learning about this.

 

[marcus]

...
Perlmutter says that galaxies are accelerating away from each other. He bases this on the fact that things that are farther away from us are moving faster than things which are closer...

Can anyone show me where I'm wrong on this?

Well your first statement is wrong. Perlmutter et al do not base the inferred accel. on that fact.

That fact is contained already in Hubble law which we have had for over 60 years.

Think about the standard statement of Hubble law v = HD. The standard formulation does not involve redshift directly because no simple relation between current expansion rate and observed redshift (only approximate for small distances.)
D is a distance now---what you would measure if you could stop expansion at this moment and use some conventional means like radar.
v is the rate that distance is expanding now.

That law is implicit in the definition of H. It is a'/a as comes up in the Friedman equation.
This is all really classical! Friedman equation goes back to 1920s! You've seen v = HD hundreds of times I expect.

v = HD already says the rate of increase is proportional to length. The longer the distance D is, the faster it increases. That goes for any moment in time on the Friedman model clock (the universe time the cosmologist's model runs on.)

Perlmutter et al result was that a' is increasing. The time derivative of the scalefactor a(t) is increasing.

Your statement is incorrect because they did NOT base this conclusion on the fact (known for over 60 years) that longer distances grow faster.
===========================

You might want to back up and ask what DID they base it on? What slight difference from what they expected? What slight adjustment in the model was required to fit the new observations? Various people might want to lend a hand in explaining.

BTW the law v = HD is exactly true, in that form, in an ideally uniform universe that obeys General Rel. Uniform in the sense of homog. and isotr. It is not just an empirical law based on observation only. And the universe so far seems to be remarkably close to uniform at large scales. One reason that Hubble law is interesting. In its standard formulation, confirmed by observation, it is evidence for the correctness of Gen Rel.

======================

Gork, just an afterthought. In the largescale pattern of distance expansion which we are witnessing, nobody gets anywhere. So it is significantly different from ordinary motion (in some local frame of reference) that we are familiar with--e.g. motion with a definable destination that is approached.

So the language you use ("farther things moving faster") is a bit misleading. It will tend to confuse you if you use that figure of speech too much. It is better to simply say "longer distances increase faster". That is more neutral and more in keeping with the math picture of the universe cosmologists normally use.

 

[Drakkith]

Perhaps the answer lies in relativity itself. The measurements seem to show that the farthest objects that can be seen in the universe are accelerating away from us. But, since motion is relative, it also means that we are also accelerating in our motion through spacetime. We cannot measure our own motion so easily as we can very distant objects, so we need to use indirect inferrence.

By the way, it is said that we should regard the expansion rate of the universe as generating true kinematic motion, not just a "stretching" of spacetime. The idea here is that we shall avoid confusion this way. So, it is perfectly proper to speak of the expansion of the universe as if it gave rise to actual motion.

Gary I'm not sure this is correct. For one I don't think our own motion through spacetime can be said to be accelerating or decelerating.

Unfortunately I don't have time to look up why at the moment as I have delicious tacos to go eat!

 

[gork]

v=HD is still based on Hubble's redhsift observations, which still has the same fundamental problem as Perlmutter's, in that we only know the velocity and distance of galaxies, and that galaxies at longer distances were, in the past, moving faster than closer galaxies in the more recent past. This is, incidentally, exactly what the universe would look like if it expanded at near-light speed at the time the first galaxies were forming and slowed down over time. You can't say that just because v=HD is old that it must be right. You can't measure acceleration, a function of time, by taking a snapshot, particularly one that is 13 billion years old.

 

[Drakkith]

Are you certain of that gork? If it were that easy then the current model would not have developed as it did.

 

[gork]

Well, you know that deferring to research isn't a valid argument. I've looked through every article I've found and nothing can explain what I'm talking about, so if anyone on this forum can, then I'd be glad to accept it as someone who knows more than I do explaining the issue, but so far people have just said "that's the way it is" or "Hubble Hubble Hubble".

If I see two cars in front of me, one is going 10 mph and is 100 ft away and another is going 90 mph and is 900 ft away, and I take a photograph of them and write their speeds at the time of the photograph, does that photograph prove the farthest car is accelerating faster than the nearer car? See, in my example, velocity is a function of distance, but only by coincidence. The nearer car could easily be accelerating and the farther car breaking, but my instantaneous snapshot will not record that data.

You would need to take data from many galaxies over a period of years indicating that the redshift was increasing over time, and that the amount of increase was proportional to their distance from us.

Can anyone tell me how I'm wrong about this without simply invoking Hubble?

 

[phinds]

You would need to take data from many galaxies over a period of years indicating that the redshift was increasing over time, and that the amount of increase was proportional to their distance from us.

But that is EXACTLY what has been done and it has nothing to do with Hubble. What you seem to not be taking into account is that the observed objects are NOT just farther away, they also represent different points in time, so we have a large SET of snapshots taken at lots of different times.

 

[George Jones]

I think gork wants to look at individual objects over a period of time in order to see the redshifts of individual objects increase. We can't do that yet. From

http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.1532:

we find that a 42-m telescope is capable of unambiguously detecting the redshift drift over a period of ~20 yr using 4000 h of observing time. Such an experiment would provide independent evidence for the existence of dark energy without assuming spatial flatness, using any other cosmological constraints or making any other astrophysical assumption.

Also, redshifts of individual objects don't necessarily increase with time. Figure 1 from the above paper plots redshift versus time. The three red curves are for objects in our universe. As we watch (over many years) a distant, high redshift object, A, we will see the object's redshift decrease, reach a minimum, and then increase. If we watch a much closer, lower redshift object, B, we see the object's redshift only increase.

Roughly, when light left A, the universe was in a decelerating matter-dominated phase, and when light left B, the universe was in the accelerating dark energy-dominated phase.

 

[RUTA]

If you go to the Supernova Cosmology Project website, you'll find actual data:

http://supernova.lbl.gov/Union/figures/SCPUnion2_mu_vs_z.txt

The data are redshifts and distance moduli for type Ia supernovae. Redshifts are relatively easy to measure, given our assumption that we know what the emission spectra look like is true. Distance moduli (called mu) for large redshifts (z) are what we find so valuable. For that you measure how bright an object appears (apparent magnitude, m) and assume you know its absolute magnitude M (how bright it would appear if you were only 10 parsecs away, i.e., the app mag at 10 pc). The trick is to know M for type Ia supernovae. That's what they figured out how to do (that number is at top of data, ~ -19). Anyway, if you know how bright the object would appear at 10 pc and you know how bright it appears now, then you can calculate how far away it is (although, you have to assume a particular cosmology model). Ok, so you plot m - M (mu) vs z and try to find a cosmology model to fit that data. The best fit cosmology model for that data is a spatially flat general relativity model filled with pressureless dust with a cosmological constant (Lambda) where the total energy density is divided 70% Lambda and 30% matter. According to that model, the universe started with a decelerating expansion rate when matter dominated and switched to an accelerated expansion rate once Lambda dominated. Thus, you read that dark energy (Lambda) is driving an accelarated expansion rate for the universe. Of course, that's not what they actually measured, i.e., they didn't measure Lambda nor did they measure an accelerating expansion rate, they measured mu vs z, Lambda and accelarated expansion are artifacts of the best fit cosmology model. There are attempts to fit the data without dark energy or accelarated expansion. One was just published last month in PRD, the reference was on Physics Forums, sorry I don't have it on this computer. Another is inhomogeneous spacetime. Still others are modifications of general relativity (f(R) gravity I believe is one such attempt). Hope this helps.

 

[marcus]

If you go to the Supernova Cosmology Project website, you'll find actual data:

http://supernova.lbl.gov/Union/figures/SCPUnion2_mu_vs_z.txt

...

Good idea! It's great to see the actual SNe data that had to go on. Basically you could say that model fitting, at the simplest level, just involves adjusting 3 numbers (today's matter fraction, cosm. const. fraction, and Hubble rate).

And you are showing me hundreds of numbers. So I have to adjust 3 parameters to get the best fit. It is a good lesson.

People don't realize how tightly constrained the whole thing is, since the model derives from the GR equation that has been checked in so many ways and passed so many tests with exquisite precision. As long as a GR model with only 3 adjustable parameters can fit data nicely people are not going to be too interested in alternatives.

(Present company excepted I mean, if some guy were to offer a model with only 2 parameters, now, and it could fit the data as well! )

 

[RUTA]

Yes, if you can beat this model (called LambdaCDM), then you might get some attention (depending on how you did it). There are really only two parameters in LCDM, since the matter and Lambda contributions must sum to the critical density (which makes the model spatially flat). So, you'd have to beat a 2-parameter model. And, there is data besides the supernova data that would have to be accounted for. I don't think there is any other model that can do all that. The alternatives I told you about all have some difficulty with fitting everything.

 

[marcus]

That's right. there is a lot of evidence that the U is SPATIALLY not curved or very nearly so. So if we accept that, then there are just two parameters. The current Hubble of course, 71, and the other two matter density .27 and Lambda density .73 forced to add up to one so really only 2 free parameters.

http://supernova.lbl.gov/Union/figures/Union2_Hubble_slide.pdf

So their data amounts to relation between two MEASURED quantities. Hundreds of datapoints. Each datapoint is a pair of numbers (z, mu) where z is observed redshift and mu encodes the distance

Like, looking at the plot there, z = .2 corresponds to around mu=39.9 which by convention means about 2.6 billion lightyears ( "now" distance)

And z = .4 looks like it corresponds to about mu=41.7
which by convention is 5.1 billion lightyears.

And the present LambdaCDM model fits that very nicely with the three (or two) parameters just mentioned adjusted as we said: .27, .73, 71.

The nice thing from my very personal perspective is that gauging the luminosity and allowing for the observed wavelength stretch gives you by the inverse square law just the distance you want! Namely the freezeframe proper distance NOW which you would measure if you could stop the expansion process at this moment and use any conventional means. It does not give some confusing pseudodistance like light travel time. It gives the actual present day distance distance. And we are DIRECTLY MEASURING. I love it. Others may disagree

proper distance now = 32.6*10^(mu/5)/(1+z) lightyears.

Great to see all that direct measurment data, RUTA!

This gets nailed to a virtual wall somewhere:
http://supernova.lbl.gov/Union/figures/SCPUnion2_mu_vs_z.txt

They say their presentation is dated 2010, but it looks rather similar to some of the figures and tables in this 2008 preprint, so I offer that to provide discussion if anyone wants:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.4142

 

[Ken G]

This is all well and good, but I think gork is actually asking a much simpler question. He is asking why the Hubble law is not interpreted as deceleration, period-- that question really doesn't have anything to do with acceleration or Lambda CDM! It is true that the longer ago we see some object, the faster it is moving away from us. Why doesn't that mean the expansion is decelerating?

The answer is called "the cosmological principle." This principle is the key unifying and simplifying factor behind all cosmological models-- it is the thing that allows us to take individual "snapshot" of different eras of our past, at different distances from us, and cobble them together into a global description of the history of our universe. The cosmological principle asserts that the universe is everywhere the same, except that it changes with time-- it ages, everywhere the same.

So when we look at galaxies at different redshifts, two things are happening-- we are seeing different times in the past, and we are seeing different distances away. gork is focusing only on the former issue-- if everything in the universe was moving away from us at thesamespeedateach age (myspacebarisn'tworking), thenhe'dberight--butthatwouldn'tobeythecosmologicalprinciplebecausethenwe'dbe inaspecialplace.

 

[marcus]

KenG, here is Gork's question in post #1. I replied to it and explained where he was wrong. This was what he was asking for. But he did not get back to me

...
Perlmutter says that galaxies are accelerating away from each other. He bases this on the fact that things that are farther away from us are moving faster than things which are closer...

Can anyone show me where I'm wrong on this?

In post #4 I replied and pointed out that the Perlmutter et al result was NOT based simply on larger distances increase at (proportionally) larger rates. That by itself does NOT imply acceleration.
We've known that for generations. Gork's first mistake was to make a kind of straw man of Perlmutter et al and suggest that they claimed acceleration based on what would be incompetent reasoning which everybody knows does not imply it.

Gork has not yet acknowledged the error in #1. So the discussion does not go anywhere.

My advice to Gork would be to make a fresh start and say: "OK I was wrong. Perlmutter et al result was NOT based on longer distances growing faster. That by itself does NOT imply accel and nobody claimed it did. Now how did Perlmutter et al deduce that the parameter Lambda in the model is positive?"

I suggest he ask a real question like: "How DID they figure that Lambda > 0?"

Note that acceleration is a circumstance that goes along with positive Lambda as one of the ways Lambda manifests itself. The public does not know or care about Lambda. But the public can understand acceleration, so acceleration was the exciting way they publicized the finding. It communicates. And they also got some attention when somebody thought to call Lambda "dark energy". That is mainly in the realm of PR. Lambda is a curvature and if you drag it over to the other side of the equation (not a natural place for it IMHO) it acquires units of energy. Any constant curvature on the LHS of the Einstein equation would do likewise.

What we are really talking about is an important constant of nature, like Newton G or Planck h. It is the other constant in the GR equation---our prevailing well-tested law of gravity. We are at the next stage of refining today's law of gravity.

It does not help anybody to insist on staying down in the level of PR and pop-sci.

 

[Ken G]

In post #4 I replied and pointed out that the Perlmutter et al result was NOT based simply on larger distances increase at (proportionally) larger rates. That by itself does NOT imply acceleration.

Yes, and you were quite correct. But it just means that gork did not present his question clearly. His subsequent posts show that his real issue was not with the acceleration, nor the Hubble law, but the fact that deceleration is not inferred from the Hubble law. My point is that if we did not have the cosmological principle, but instead a model where the Earth was at the center and everything in the universe moved at the same time-varying speed away from us, then we would indeed conclude that the universe was decelerating. All we need to not conclude that is the cosmological principle, which immediately creates a different interpretation of the Hubble law (along the lines of what you explained quite correctly but I don't think gork would get the punchline without the cosmological principle).

I suggest he ask a real question like: "How DID they figure that Lambda > 0?"

I agree, but first we must establish the more basic aspect of the question, which has nothing to do with Perlmutter. It's crucial that gork understand why the Hubble law is not interpreted the way he imagines. I'm not saying anything in your answer was wrong, only that I think the question is at that more basic level.

What we are really talking about is an important constant of nature, like Newton G or Planck h. It is the other constant in the GR equation---our prevailing well-tested law of gravity. We are at the next stage of refining today's law of gravity.

That's all true, I just think gork's incredulity about acceleration stems from a more basic issue about what the Hubble law means. There is a situation where his interpretation could be perfectly correct, so we need to look at why that situation is not the one that gets used-- it's because it wouldn't satisfy the cosmological principle, it would put the Earth at a very special place in the universe, and wouldn't obey GR with or without Lambda. But everything you said is certainly both correct and useful for understanding the modern state of affairs, I'm not criticizing.

 

[gork]

George and RUTA, thank you very much for your explanations. I understand now.

Marcus, quit trying to get an apology from me. You never explained anything, just told me I was wrong because someone smarter than me already figured it out. You weren't helpful at all, so stop pretending you were. I am smart enough to understand it once it was explained. You never tried. So I won't say I was wrong, because I wasn't. I was asking a question that you didn't answer multiple times. George and RUTA answered it thoroughly and were very helpful. And without being pedantic. You could learn a lot other than physics here.

 

[Ken G]

Still, I wonder if you understand now, gork, that none of the things you find in those detailed explanations of how the redshift observations are interpreted would be possible without the cosmological principle, and why it is the cosmological principle, not those details, that answer why a Hubble law does not mean the expansion is decelerating. That's the only issue here that isn't "black boxy", that isn't "this is what the people get when they make detailed models", which isn't all that satisfying by itself. You also have to bear in mind that marcus was probably reacting to all the people who come on here and say "I think cosmologists are wrong because they overlooked some really basic point", which is not what you did (you framed it as "what is wrong with this reasoning", and the answer is, "it doesn't satisfy the cosmological principle"). Also, bear in mind that everything he said was a correct explanation, and that it took him time to lay out that correct explanation, so you should still thank him even if it rubbed you the wrong way that he wanted you to recognize the misconception behind your question. Often, we find it is important to "kill the misconception" in order to achieve real learning, but that can sometimes come out sounding like "kill the questioner", leading to "kill the answerer."

 

[gork]

I should have explained my question more clearly, but I didn't realize that people still thought of Earth as being the center of the Universe. I didn't know the specific jargon, but I already realized that the Earth is moving away from everything else the same way it is moving away from us. I like the example of drawing points on the surface of a balloon and then inflating the balloon, but then imagining the surface of the balloon is 3-dimensional. But yes, I recognize that to an observer in a galaxy redshifted from our point of view the Milky Way would be equally redshifted. That was never the issue. The issue was mostly that I didn't recognize that Perlmutter was taking that snapshot I was talking about and figuring out that the Universe is bigger than it would've been had the Universe not accelerated. That's something that none of the articles I read on the topic actually mentioned.

And I understand that most people who post questions like this on here might not understand that answer were it given to them. I actually started studying astrophysics when I was 12, but I went to college to be an art teacher, and kept physics as a hobby that I take pretty seriously.

Thanks again for the help!

 

[phinds]

I should have explained my question more clearly, but I didn't realize that people still thought of Earth as being the center of the Universe.

gork, this is a great forum for learning physics and I think you'll find it a worthwhile place to be. However, your pissy attitude and statements like the one above are not going to endear you to the moderators, and Marcus goes out of his way to be helpful to all who post here, so if you plan to stick around, you would do well to rethink your attitude.

 

[Ken G]

I like the example of drawing points on the surface of a balloon and then inflating the balloon, but then imagining the surface of the balloon is 3-dimensional.

The one I like is to take a transparency with galaxies drawn on it, and another that is just the same except it has been put through a copying machine and expanded a bit, maybe 10%. Then you pick a galaxy that is the same on both viewgraphs, color them in blue, and overlap them, and say "here's our galaxy in the past and now, and look how the other galaxies have moved farther away in the mean time." But then here's the kicker-- you pick another galaxy, color it red on both viewgraphs, and ask what the situation will look like from that galaxy. Then you move the viewgraphs so as to superimpose the red galaxies, and sure enough all the rest, including the green one, look like they have moved away from the red galaxy. It also shows that the farther away ones have moved a larger distance.

 

[gork]

Phinds, I'd just like to point out that Marcus, having not answered my question, responded to me re-asking it by insulting me. I didn't get a pissy attitude until I felt he was unjustly sniping at me. I also won't be posting much here, but that's only because I don't have many things to ask. This really was the only nagging question in physics for me. So you won't have to worry about me coming back around. I used to post on forums a lot, and I've met a Marcus on every forum. People like him have kept me from using forums to communicate my ideas for years.

 

[twofish-quant]

Perlmutter says that galaxies are accelerating away from each other. He bases this on the fact that things that are farther away from us are moving faster than things which are closer.

He bases this on the fact that things that are farther away are moving *much* faster than things that are closer. You can create a universe in which things are moving away at constant expansion, and it turns out that the speed is larger than constant expansion.

The problem is that we see things farther away from us as they were farther in the past.

And they've taken this into account.

It turns out that when you look at large distances, there are about six or seven different definitions for distance and speed, and they've taken into account all of this bookkeeping.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_measures_(cosmology)

So quasars at the edge of the visible universe were traveling at .9c 13.7 billion years ago. Galaxies half as far away were traveling half that speed 7 billion years ago, or whatever the numbers are.

The exact numbers are important. You can calculate what we expect to see if the universe were constantly expanding and it turns out that the galaxies are expanding faster than that.

 

[twofish-quant]

One thing about popular descriptions of science is that they usually leave out the "messy details." It turns out that in order to deal with the cosmological distances, you have to go through about six pages of math. It's not particularly complicated math (algebra and basic calculus), but most popular treatments leave it out.

 

[Chronos]

Marcus gave you a good answer, gork, and was merely correcting your misunderstanding. I did not perceive anything 'snippy' about his response.

 

[RUTA]

One thing about popular descriptions of science is that they usually leave out the "messy details." It turns out that in order to deal with the cosmological distances, you have to go through about six pages of math. It's not particularly complicated math (algebra and basic calculus), but most popular treatments leave it out.

Another problem with popular descriptions is what they claim to have been "measured." In this case, accelerated expansion was not measured. Spectra and apparent magnitudes were measured. These were converted to redshifts (z) and distance moduli (mu) by assuming knowledge of the emitted spectra and absolute magnitudes. No one disputes these two assumptions so it is widely accepted that mu versus z is "data." This data can be explained without accelerated expansion and therefore without dark energy. However, even the Nobel committee citation said these guys discovered "the accelerated expansion of the universe." So, even the Nobel prize has become sensationalized for popular consumption

 

[twofish-quant]

These were converted to redshifts (z) and distance moduli (mu) by assuming knowledge of the emitted spectra and absolute magnitudes. No one disputes these two assumptions so it is widely accepted that mu versus z is "data."

In fact lots of people disputed those assumptions, and if you read the original paper, most of it was to go through point by point every possible alternative explanation and give very good reasons why those alternative explanations have problems.

This data can be explained without accelerated expansion and therefore without dark energy.

Not without assuming something even weirder. If you assert that the universe isn't accelerating, that means that we have something *REALLY* wrong. GR is garbage, photon behave weirdly, the universe is outside the planet Pluto is an illusion by space aliens. Arp and Hoyle are right. The universe was created on October 13, 6006 BC.

Doesn't matter. If it turns out that the universe isn't accelerating and what is happening is even weirder, then they deserve the Nobel.

 

[RUTA]

In fact lots of people disputed those assumptions, and if you read the original paper, most of it was to go through point by point every possible alternative explanation and give very good reasons why those alternative explanations have problems.

"disputed?" past tense? Do you have any references for recent objections to the data?

Not without assuming something even weirder. If you assert that the universe isn't accelerating, that means that we have something *REALLY* wrong. GR is garbage, photon behave weirdly, the universe is outside the planet Pluto is an illusion by space aliens. Arp and Hoyle are right. The universe was created on October 13, 6006 BC.

Doesn't matter. If it turns out that the universe isn't accelerating and what is happening is even weirder, then they deserve the Nobel.

There are other explanations such as dark flows (Tsagas, C.G.: Peculiar motions, accelerated expansion, and the cosmological axis. PHYSICAL REVIEW D 84, Sep 2011) and inhomogeneous spacetime (Clarkson, C., Maartens, R.: Inhomogeneity and the foundations of concordance cosmology. Classical and Quantum Gravity 27, 124008 (2010). arXiv:1005.2165v2). Whether or not these are "weirder" than dark energy is subjective. My point stands -- accelarated expansion was not measured and does not follow necessarily from the data.

 

[twofish-quant]

"disputed?" past tense? Do you have any references for recent objections to the data?

Unpublished astrophysics lunch time conversations.

Right after the initial data came out, I remember a ton of conversations in my department with people trying to find holes in the conclusions. The problem is that we did a lot of brain storming about things that could be wrong with it and "dark flows" and "voids" did come up a lot. The trouble is that after working on it for a few days to weeks, every thing everyone came up with would not work, and coming up with an objection to the results that does not work is not publishable.

What you see in the published literature is just the tip of the iceberg. If you do a measurement and come up with a theory that says that there is an objection to the results that does not work, then it's not going to be published because it's not interesting.

There are other explanations such as dark flows (Tsagas, C.G.: Peculiar motions, accelerated expansion, and the cosmological axis. PHYSICAL REVIEW D 84, Sep 2011)

I'm 98% sure that the scenario in that paper is excluded by WMAP measurements. I'm not a WMAP expert, but I know someone that is, and the next time I have lunch with him (which might be a while since I'm not at the university), I'll bring up the numbers in the paper, and I'm 98% sure he'll tell me that it's excluded by WMAP. The reason I'm 98% sure about this is that this is a conversation that has been done before.

inhomogeneous spacetime (Clarkson, C., Maartens, R.: . Inhomogeneity and the foundations of concordance cosmologyClassical and Quantum Gravity 27, 124008 (2010). arXiv:1005.2165v2).

Also Whitshire come up with his timescape involving voids. But...

That paper you referenced does not present an alternative model for the accelerating universe. It just talks in general about non-homogenous models, and doesn't present anything that would call the results into question. And Riess et. al already thought of this. To remember the possibility of a local void, they reran the results, dropping the all of the nearby supernova and they came up with the same answer.

Way, way back in 1998, people in my department (and I'm sure every other astronomy department) were talking about the possibility that the results were due to local voids. It turns out that this won't work because you can limit the size of voids by galaxy motions and gravitational lensing, and even after you put the maximum void that the data allows, the effect still doesn't go away.

None of this stuff got published because none of it was interesting. It someone had gotten a void or a dark flow model to work, then that would have been publishable, but no one did, and it wasn't for lack of trying.

My point stands -- accelarated expansion was not measured and does not follow necessarily from the data.

Which data? If you take into account all of the other data that exists, no one has come up with a better explanation. Now if you take the original data by itself, sure there are lots of alternative explanations, but they disappear with all of the new data that's come in.

The two papers that you cite don't present viable alternative models. Clarkson/Maartens don't claim that their research challenges acceleration, and Maartens has written several papers on dark energy. I'm pretty certain that the Tsagas scenario is excluded by WMAP. Also you can find out a lot about people by having lunch with them. There's nothing in any of the papers that suggests that the authors themselves think that the universe isn't accelerating.

It looks like a duck. It quacks like a duck. We've established that it's not a penguin, chicken, or blood hound. It could still be a goose, but right now people are trying to figure out what kind of duck it is.

But sometimes a duck is a duck.

 

[RUTA]

Interesting info, twofish-quant, but you did not refute my assertions concerning the mu vs z data from type Ia supernova (only data I have referenced herein).

1. No one disputes the data. Discussed? Questioned? Double-checked? Sure. Disputed after such consideration? No. If anyone had reason to dispute the data those reasons would certainly be published.

2. The data does not constitute a measurement of accelerated expansion.

3. There are explanations of the data that do not involve accelerated expansion. Whether or not these explanations account for WMAP data is not part of the claim. The reason for bringing this up is to verify point 2.

When I teach cosmology for non-science majors or science majors, I try to stick to the facts, I even share with them the Observational Indeterminancy Principle of Cosmology . [Michael Heller, Theoretical Foundations of Cosmology, World Scientific Press, Singapore, 1992, pp. 81-82.]. I present what has been measured, what assumptions are required to turn those measurements into data, and what explanations have been rendered to account for that data. I do the same on Physics Forums. If I'm missing facts, please give me the references, I will change my lectures and posts accordingly

 

[twofish-quant]

Interesting info, twofish-quant, but you did not refute my assertions concerning the mu vs z data from type Ia supernova (only data I have referenced herein).

One reason that people don't get Nobel prizes immediately after making the discovery is so that you can let new data in. If you had *only* the original data, then yes, it might be one of several dozen other things, but as new data has come in, it's becoming more clear that they actually were the first people to record the accelerating universe.

There are explanations of the data that do not involve accelerated expansion.

And none of those explanations work when you pull in other data. The two main explanations that you've brought up are "dark flows" and "dark voids."

In order to come up with a model of dark flows that work, you have to assume nearby accelerations that have been ruled out by WMAP. If you assume that the dark flows are far away then you run into the problem that you don't have angular dependence.

In order to come up with an explanation that involves voids, you can use observations of the sizes of known voids. If you remove the data that could be influenced by a nearby void, you still get acceleration. If you assume that the voids are far way, then you should see a change with direction and you don't.

What you can do (and it's a great calculation for a first year graduate student) is to calculate the maximum possible effect due to "dark flows" or "dark voids" and it turns out when try to take those into account, you still get acceleration.

Whether or not these explanations account for WMAP data is not part of the claim.

I don't see the point of excluding data in figuring out what is going on. I also don't see much of a point in getting into semantic arguments. If you want to get nit-picky, my speedometer measures the rotation rate of my transmission, a thermometer measures the expansion rate of mercury. I don't see the point of getting nit-picky here.

When I teach cosmology for non-science majors or science majors, I try to stick to the facts

And there are a ton of facts.

I present what has been measured, what assumptions are required to turn those measurements into data, and what explanations have been rendered to account for that data. I do the same on Physics Forums. If I'm missing facts, please give me the references, I will change my lectures and posts accordingly

I just did. I should point out that a lot of what I've done are things that I haven't calculation myself, and come out of lunch time conversations. I've mentioned that my alma mater is the University of Texas at Austin, and it wouldn't be too hard to send e-mail to people in the cosmology department there to find out what exactly they think of the supernova data.

I haven't personally done the WMAP calculation, but I know someone that has, and I'm too busy right now to reproduce it, although it would make a great homework problem for an intro cosmology course.

I'm fairly certain by this point that someone has written it up in some review paper, and writing a term paper that describes what the current state of research is on dark voids and dark flows is also a great homework problem.

 

[twofish-quant]

Also here is a reference to a blog that talks about the Tsagas paper

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/10/dark_energy_dark_flow_and_can.php

In fact, I know people that did this calculation when the supernova data first came out, and once you figure out that dark flow can't explain acceleration there is no point in publishing. Note that Tsagas himself says that his model can't explain all of the acceleration (which is what people I know also figured out). The maximum decleration parameter that Tsagas has gotten is -0.3, whereas what is observed in -0.5.

 

[RUTA]

Twofish, you still aren't getting my point, so I'll make it simple. Either the supernovae data in and of itself logically entails accelerated expansion or it doesn't. If it does, show me the proof (your pedagree and lunch room conversations will not suffice). If it doesn't, I will not propagate the myth that this data constitutes a discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe.

Edit: The equivalent of claiming the supernova data constitutes the discovery of accelerated expansion is to say Brahe discovered that the planets went around the Sun while the Sun and Moon went around Earth. I would not give the Nobel to Brahe for discovering the Tychonic system, I would give it to him for his unprecedented astronomical measurements. Kepler later used those measurements in the context of a completely different cosmology model. Likewise, Perlmutter et al should get the prize for what they actually did, i.e., obtain distance moduli for large redshift supernovae, not for what they inferred from that data, i.e., accelerated expansion. Who knows what cosmology model that data might be used to support in the future.

 

[twofish-quant]

Twofish, you still aren't getting my point, so I'll make it simple. Either the supernovae data in and of itself logically entails accelerated expansion or it doesn't.

That just doesn't make any sense to me. The supernova data is just one piece of the puzzle and has to be understood in the context of other data. In order to do anything with the supernova data, you have to make hundreds of assumptions, and there is no way that you can justify those assumptions without reference to other data.

If you had only the supernova data, then you could come up with a lot of alternative explanations. It turns out that none of those observations work in light of other data. If Perlmutter had published and then a year later it turns out that supernova Ia were not standard candles and there is large scale evolution of SN Ia or if it turned out that dark flows were much stronger than expected, it would have been a "merely interesting" paper but not worth a Nobel.

Now as it happens subsequent experiments have tightened error bars, and WMAP shows consistent CMB evidence.

Also note that Perlmutter went in with a hundred assumptions. He was trying to measure the deceleration parameter, which was expected to be positive.

If it does, show me the proof (your pedagree and lunch room conversations will not suffice).

I'm an astrophysicist, not a mathematician. I don't deal with proof. I can't "prove" that the universe is accelerating any more than I can "prove" that the Earth is round.

No single scientific observation is "proof" of anything. You have to view observations as fitting within a model, and right now the idea that universe is accelerating is the best model that people have come up with, and the fact that people have tried really hard and failed to come up with alternative models should tell us something.

I can't *prove* that there isn't a simple explanation that explains everything. I can show that people have tried and failed to come up with an alternative explanations, and the most obvious model right now is pretty darn interesting.

I can't "prove" something is true. I can "prove" something is false, and Perlmutter kills CDM with Lambda=0, which was the standard cosmological model in 1995. The simplest theoretical patch is to assume that Lambda > 0.

Likewise, Perlmutter et al should get the prize for what they actually did, i.e., obtain distance moduli for large redshift supernovae, not for what they inferred from that data, i.e., accelerated expansion. .

Very strongly disagree. If Perlmutter et al. just got distance moduli for large redshift supernovae and got what people expected, that wouldn't be worth a Nobel. They got the Nobel because they did the observations and got results that *no one* expected. It's like Columbus discovering America. If everything had gone according to plan, and Columbus really ended in Japan, that would be "merely interesting." But he went in looking for Japan and ended up hitting something unexpected. Same with Perlmutter. We were expecting q=1. We got q=-0.6.

Columbus gets credit for "discovering" America, even though he went to his grave thinking that he was in Japan. Hubble gets credit figuring out that galaxies are moving away from each other even though his calibrations turn out to be wrong.

The revolutionary part was that Perlmutter came up with numbers that cannot bet explained without really weird stuff happening. Even if it turns out that the universe is not accelerating, the way that we thought the universe worked in 1997 just will not work with his observations.